6 ms·
Sid Meier's Memoir
- b20000 6y agodoes the book go into details about how the games were marketed and sold, and bootstrapped to market, on almost no budget?
- jrumbut 6y agoI was really hoping this was somehow a new game.
- v64 6y agoSame, I saw the headline and thought this was gonna be Sid Meier's version of the Sims
- arcticbull 6y agoGrabbed one of the signed copies. I'm not sure when I'll get the chance to read it, but Sid's games were some of the first computer games I played, and definitely influenced me towards a career in computers. Much respect and appreciation to Sid. Thanks for the time well wasted :)
- T-hawk 6y agoIf it's truly a Sid Meier product, once you start, you'll keep doing one-more-page until it's suddenly sunrise :)
- iguanayou 6y agoThis is a great book! Just finished reading it.
- acdha 6y agoFor someone who’s bored with combat-focused games and misses the open nature of games like Railroad Tycoon, who’s following in Meier’s footsteps? I was thinking that if there was a rebooted RT2 I’d buy it in a second but fell off the Civ train due to wanting either less or more plausible combat, not to mention QA.
- krajzeg 6y agoActually working on a non-violent indie 4X right now, called Slipways [1][2]. It's set in space, but I do owe lots of inspiration to Railroad Tycoon and Transport Tycoon, and the core of the game is about connecting places together so that goods can flow from place to place. It's a much more condensed experience than either of these - 40-60 minutes per playthrough depending on playstyle. [1]: https://twitter.com/krajzeg/status/1304447134209585152 https://twitter.com/krajzeg/status/1304447134209585152 [2]: https://slipways.net https://slipways.net
- acdha 6y agoOh, neat – I'll take a look tonight!
- afterburner 6y agoWhy use ESDF instead of WASD Fun game btw.
- krajzeg 6y agoThe web version is a PICO-8 game. PICO-8 is a very constrained fantasy console (posted here on HN a few times). ESDF are actually the "player 2" keys of the "console", so they're easy to access from within, unlike the actual keyboard - letting me save precious code tokens (you only get 8192 for the whole game on the PICO-8) for actual gameplay.
- danbolt 6y agoI love the PICO-8 version as a way to spend time when waiting for a compile to finish. Thanks for making it!
- MatekCopatek 6y agoTake a look at OpenTTD, Banished, Tropico 5, Cities Skylines and Frostpunk. It's a diverse list, but they all fit your open non-combat strategy criteria.
- 6y ago
- chaostheory 6y agoI wish this was on Audible. It's a bit strange that the only audio option is a $30 CD
- TimSchumann 6y agoThis reminds me of a comment a friend made over dinner last week about Civilization. Totally bought us each a copy, thanks for sharing this.
- jugg1es 6y agoThe site matches the style popular when Civ2 came out!
- duluca 6y agoJust finished the hardback. Great read. It was interesting to learn that the nuclear Ghandi stories about an integer causing an overflow was totally made up. Also it was overwhelming to read the many many games and prototypes he developed.
- b20000 6y agointeresting that nobody here talks about how Sid sold and marketed his games
- nrjames 6y agoThis is a good light read. Working in game dev, I found some of his thoughts around prototyping, production, and design to be insightful and gladly would have read more of those. I also would gladly have read more about Sid Meier's CPU Bach, since that was ahead of its time and seems interesting algorithmically. His stories are a bit more interesting in the early years and the end of the book drags a bit, as he goes from Civ IV to Civ V to Civ IV.
- ianai 6y agoWonder if he logged his ideas and work significantly more for those later pieces of work than the former.
- kyuudou 6y agoI love the web 1.0 design. Gandhi might deploy nuclear weapons!
- rektide 6y agothe Amazon category is "microprocessor design"!
- 1123581321 6y agoAt Barnes & Noble it was tucked away near the D&D books. Impossible to find without floor staff help.
- simonh 6y agoOrdered. Funnily enough I recently came across this GDC presentation by Sid and Bruce Shelley on the development of the original Civilization[0]. Highly recommended. The influence of Empire as one of the inspirations of the game was obvious to anyone familiar with it. If you're interested there's an excellent updated implementation of Empire on the App Store[1]. I'd love to be able to get a version of Civ 2 on mobile. It's still by far my favourite iteration of Civ. Or Pirates! [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ-auWfJTts [1]https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/mother-of-all-battles/id425160860 https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/mother-of-all-battles/id425160...
- Rebelgecko 6y agoAs long as you're referring to the original version of Pirates, it works great on phones in an emulator (I've used the NES version)
- gbraad 6y agoThis for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.windowsgames.moab https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.windowsgam... or Windows: http://www.windowsgames.co.uk/mother.html http://www.windowsgames.co.uk/mother.html ?
- tomashertus 6y agoIt's amazing to see them sharing the stage and talking about their first achievement with such dignity and depth. It's even more mind-blowing when you realize that Shelley went ahead and started Ensemble Studios[1] that created the Age of Empires franchise which is still alive today[2]. And Civilization is today still under development and even more successful than ever before. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_Studios https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_Studios 2. https://www.ageofempires.com/games/age-of-empires-iv/ https://www.ageofempires.com/games/age-of-empires-iv/ Edit: Formatting and grammar
- vanderZwan 6y agoI bought The Settlers 7 purely because I knew Bruce Shelley worked on it. It was a nice game, interesting take on the "casual economic sim" genre
- offtop5 6y agoThanks for sharing, just ordered my copy !
- s_dev 6y agoAlternative to Amazon: https://wordery.com/sid-meiers-memoir-sid-meier-9781324005872?cTrk=MTc4NTc4Mjc5fDVmODA3ZGE5OWM3Zjc6MToyOjVmODA3ZGE3MGUyYWIzLjE4MDUyOTQ2OjMzNmNjMTI3 https://wordery.com/sid-meiers-memoir-sid-meier-978132400587... Bought it the other day. Still waiting for Stripe Press to not be Amazon exclusive as well.
- smoll 6y agoBased on the title of this thread, I was disappointed that the title of his memoir did not end in an exclamation mark, but then was happy to discover that it is indeed titled "Memoir!"
- yreg 6y agoOnly a few of the games had bang in the name, e.g. Sid Meier's Civilization or Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon are bangless. Still, I find the cover of this book so delightful!
- the_af 6y agoTrue. But we were all thinking Pirates! :P
- r00fus 6y agoSMAC is also bang-free (and the best games IMHO).
- jonny_eh 6y agoSid Meier's Alpha Centauri
- barumi 6y agoFlip the "i" in "Centauri" upside down and there's your bang.
- tunesmith 6y agoI don't know why I love this comment so much.
- GauntletWizard 6y ago“Sid Meier's Alpha Centaur!” sounds like a game I would play, but also like a brand of ebook smut.
- frankcort 6y agoBook looks interesting but I'm curious... how do we know this is Sid Meiers's site and isn't just a site with a bunch of affiliate links on it?
- 1123581321 6y agoSid links to it on Twitter.
- gbraad 6y agoNo plain ePub option?
- volkl48 6y agoHe recently did an hour-long interview/panel about it and his career for PAX Online, should anyone be interested in watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blah1hNDmdA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blah1hNDmdA
- frompdx 6y agoI recently finished Sid Meier's Memoir! I found it fascinating and highly readable. If you like games you will like this book. Meier's inspirations and insights into what makes a game fun make this memoir well worth it to anyone who is interested in game design.